Pumula Lodge one big WOW!

HIBBERDENE: FAMILY-RUN HOTEL CALLS FOR HYPERBOLE BECAUSE IT'S THAT, WELL, LEKKER

- Hein Kaiser

A few decades ago, the annual holiday run to the coasts did not include Cape Town or Umhlanga and Ballito. Families headed to the KwaZulu-Natal South Coast, to Port Edward, Shelley Beach – Sanlameer if you had bucks – and St Michaels. There's Uvongo, Margate, Ramsgate and, for the budget conscious, the TO Strand in Leisure Bay. With more blue flag beaches than the Grinch has fingers, the South Coast is still as beautiful, gorgeous and hospitable as it was when it was considered fab. Because it still is, in so many ways.

At the centre of it all there's Pumula Lodge, a family-run boutique hotel in Hibberdene that's less than a minute's walk to a beach that attracts every cliché in the book: stunning, pristine, beautiful and so on. You'd need a thesaurus and an appetite for hyperbole when staying at the place, because it's that, well, lekker.

Here, it is all about family. The way it should be. Though if you are a singleton or a couple looking for a place where you don't have to lift a finger and where chilling becomes a temporary occupation between boardrooms, this is the place.